Thoth - List of Editions.

Lillie

From the info I have been given so far...

'77 US Games
0913866156.

'78 Weiser
0877284520.

I believe both of these were ordinary flip top boxes.
If anyone knows an earlier example please tell.

Also, does anyone knowwhen ISBN numbers were invented and first used?
 

Lillie

W H Smiths?

Good god!

They are faschists at the best of times. I'm not surprised they wanted to standardise everything.
Then they would find it easier to blacklist anything they didn't like.
 

Rusty Neon

Sangreal editions of the Thoth deck

Lillie said:
The very first edition I am unlikely ever to see. It must look very strange.
"The first (and little known) printing was done privately by Carr Collins and his Texas based Sangreal Foundation...."
It appears that the designs were simply line drawings, in red and blue.

Thank you to Vincent for finding the quote.

Does anyone have scans, or links to scans, of a Sangreal edition of the Thoth deck? It would be very interesting to see scans. :)
 

Strange2

Rusty Neon said:
Does anyone have scans, or links to scans, of a Sangreal edition of the Thoth deck? It would be very interesting to see scans. :)

There are black and white scans of 16 cards from the Thoth Sangreal One-Color Tarot in Kaplan's Encyclopedia of Tarot vol. III, on page 156. They look like muddy photocopies of the cards.
 

Voron

Pale imitation

Original Deck:

Date of deck: copyright 1986 -- deck bought 1996.
Publisher: U.S. Games Systems and AGMuller & Cie
Printed in: Neuhausen am Rheinfall, Switzerland
Box design: Red on White OTO Style
Card Size: Small
Fronts: Gray border with design, astrological symbols and Hebrew letters on bottom of trumps
Backs: Off-white borders
Extra cards: 2 extra Magus/Magician cards
LWB, contents : Universe Card on front, Essay by Wasserman, Suggested reading list, Tree of Life Diagram, Publisher's Note, Lady Freida Harris' essay w/ footnotes by Kaplan. Sans sefif font.
47 pages, By James Wasserman, Copyright 1978, 1983, 1987 by Stuart R. Kaplan & Donald Weiser
The LWB does *not* have the U.S. Games "Fool" logo on the back of it.
ISBN: From box: 0-88079-308-2 (LWB: same)

Notes: The cards are rich and dark. This is the deck I fell in love with. My deck bought around 2001 is literally a sickly, pale imitation of this deck (unfortunately stolen except for the box, LBW and extra cards).

Other deck:
Small size,
Lavendar/purple box by US games, printed in Belgium.
Added-on gold sticker on box indicating extra cards.
Back of cards says 1996 AGMuller
LBW appears same (need to recheck) as other deck. ISBN same.
White/grey borders.
Greenish tinge, washed out appearance.

I will provide comparative scans of the extra magus cards when I can.

Are all recently printed Thoth decks washed out and bland?

-Voron
 

fyreflye

Voron said:
Original Deck:

Date of deck: copyright 1986 -- deck bought 1996.
Publisher: U.S. Games Systems and AGMuller & Cie
Printed in: Neuhausen am Rheinfall, Switzerland
Box design: Red on White OTO Style
Card Size: Small
Fronts: Gray border with design, astrological symbols and Hebrew letters on bottom of trumps
Backs: Off-white borders
Extra cards: Unicursal Hexagram, 2 extra Magus cards
LWB, contents : Essay by Wasserman, Suggested reading list, Tree of Life Diagram, Publisher's Note, Lady Freida Harris' essay w/ footnotes by Kaplan.
47 pages, By James Wasserman, Copyright 1978, 1983, 1987 by Stuart R. Kaplan & Donald Weiser
ISBN: Box?? (at home) 0-88079-308-2 LWB

Notes: The cards are rich and dark. This is the deck I fell in love with. My deck bought around 2001 is literally a sickly, pale imitation of this deck (unfortunately stolen except for the box, LBW and extra cards).

-Voron

This is the printing of the Small deck that I have, though it contains no Unicursal Hexagram. Since I found it used it may be the original owner lost the Hex. The ISBN on the box is as above. I also have the Large deck from AGM with the same copyright date and containing the Hex. As far as I've been able to determine this is best reproduction of the images you can find. I'm salivating over the new Urania digital edtion but it's still not available. You can pre-order it from Amazon.de if you're interested. If you have an account with any other Amazon branch your shipping and billing information is centrally stored so that once you get the deck in your cart and sign in the rest is easy.
 

Rusty Neon

Marion and I compared our respective versions of the Llewellyn deck. As noted above, I have the Llewellyn circa 1969 Hong Kong printing deck while Marion has the Llewellyn circa 1969 U.S. printing deck. (As well, I have a copy of the same deck as Marion's on its way to me in the mail from a vendor in the States. :))

Box: In the case of the H.K. deck, the writing on the front of the box is in gold ink. In the case of the U.S. deck, it's in black ink.

Card Borders: In the case of the H.K. deck, the borders are powder blue. The borders of the U.S. deck are noticeably pale and are greenish-blue.

8 of Cups: As mentioned in one of my posts above, the H.K. 8 of Cups is missing the 8 at the top of the card. The U.S. card isn't missing the 8.

The identity of the few cards that are more relatively washed than the others are generally the same ones as between the H.K. and the U.S. decks.

As far as I remember (and hopefully Marion will correct me if I'm wrong), we weren't able to easily determine which of the two decks had better reproduction quality in the time we spent looking. If I had to have a view, I guess I'd say that the U.S. deck had a slightly better reproduction quality, but I liked the H.K. powder blue borders.
 

Alta

I agree with Rusty Neon's summary. The sharpness of the image is not that great in either deck. I could not a big difference there. RN summed up the rest of the differences. My deck definitely had a slightly green cast to the blue. Shades of icky green Thoth of the future???? lol